Energy Minister issues clarification on islandwide power outage

Energy Minister Anura Karunathilake said that efforts are currently underway to restore the power system following an islandwide power outage this morning (17), with electricity expected to be restored in stages as soon as possible.

He said that the exact cause for the islandwide power interruption is still not known and that steps to restore power are under way while it has been restored in several areas by now.

Although the primary cause of the power outage has not yet been identified, the Minister stated that investigations are currently underway—with a special focus on whether an operational failure at a power plant in Kotmale yesterday (16) may have triggered the imbalance in the system.

Furthermore, the Minister made a special request to consumers with rooftop solar panel systems, asking them to disconnect their systems at this time to assist in the swift restoration of the power grid.

Minister Karunathilake further said:

"Due to an emergency situation that arose this morning, a system failure occurred, resulting in an island-wide disruption and collapse of the electricity supply. As the national system operator, we are currently working to restore the system. We anticipate that we will be able to restore the power supply in stages very soon.

Furthermore, we specifically request consumers with rooftop solar panels to switch them off; doing so will assist us in the system restoration process. We have not yet identified the root cause of the incident. However, our primary focus at this moment is to restore the electricity supply across the entire country as quickly as possible.

Yesterday, an issue arose at one of the power plants in Kotmale, causing it to go offline. We are currently investigating whether this triggered an imbalance in the system, or if the loss of system stability was caused by other factors. Nevertheless, we are confident that we will be able to resolve this issue very soon. We have already managed to restore electricity to one specific area. We anticipate that, by proceeding in this manner—section by section—we will be able to restore the power supply to the entire country very soon.”